Commonplace book

orig. A book in which ‘commonplaces’ or passages important for reference were collected, usually under general heads; hence, a book in which one records passages or matters to be especially remembered or referred to, with or without arrangement.1578 COOPERThesaurus A studious yong man ... may gather to himselfe good furniture both of words and approved phrases ... and to make to his use as it were a common place booke. 1642 FULLERHoly & Prof. St. A Common-place-book contains many notions in garrison, whence the owner may draw out an army into the field.

Subscribe To

Friday, December 05, 2008

Back from a week’s Thanksgiving vacation in California. Read a woeful 9/11 novel by Jess Walter called The Zero. My wife and I took the nieces and nephews to Borders for the annual Thanksgiving book-buy. (In lieu of Christmas gifts.) I enjoy the event, probably because it places me in the position of house authority on books. My niece Laura picked out William Trevor’s Story of Lucy Gault on my recommendation (she said that she likes novels in which characters face family crises), and my nephew Paul accepted Johnny Tremain. (His mother is a historian of colonial America. I suspect that the choice was a compromise.) I found myself at sea, however, when my nice Hannah wanted a recommendation for another writer like Stephanie Meyer. I had never heard of Stephanie Meyer! What kind of literary snob am I!

0
comments:

D. G. Myers

A critic and literary historian for nearly a quarter of a century at Texas A&M and Ohio State universities, I am the author of The Elephants Teach and ex-fiction critic for Commentary. I have also written for Jewish Ideas Daily, the New York Times Book Review, the Weekly Standard, Philosophy and Literature, the Sewanee Review, First Things, the Daily Beast, the Barnes & Noble Review, the Journal of the History of Ideas, American Literary History, and other journals. Here is the Commonplace Blog’s statement of principles, such as they are.